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Perfect Equals Rigid

I think one thing that a lot of people need to realize is that many bloggers don’t blog for others but instead blog for themselves. Dave Winer is one such person who has always stated this time and time again, and I myself have always felt the same way. I don’t think of my blog as a stage act where I’m putting on a show to an audience (and thus need new material daily to keep the show running and me tapping my feet) but instead I think of it as a personal journal that I can record my thoughts and remember them in the future when I forget life lessons I’ve learnt in the past. Today is no less of example of this.

While digging around on the Web last night, trying to discover those who have pointed to my site in the past (which is a great way to find new and interesting people), I came across an article by Elran Oded entitled Good Design Will Set You Free: Moment of Zen that I actually had read a long time ago. Why I was glad I found it again though was because Elran helped to remind me of something very important that I had learnt but forgotten when he said the following.

The Myth of Perfect Web Design” by D. Keith Robinson was originally written on August 4th, 2003. But it couldn’t be more significant in today’s climate of redesign madness. The rules are all being rewritten before our very eyes, and it is sheer genius for him to have reposted this article the other day in this current context. A testament to the power of truly good writing. Anyway, it seemed to lift me up a little because it appeared to confirm earlier statements regarding overdesign (and trying to be the coolest), prioritizing (choose your battles), and sacrifices (in design). i especially liked the comment made by Nollind Whachell, which in my mind, perfectly characterizes the Myth article. Simply put, “Perfect equals rigid”. so true.

When I read what I had written back then I basically gave myself a mental slap to the head. How could I have been so stupid! This was something that I’d learnt in the past but had totally forgotten. What made me think I had forgotten it? Because my Exploring Squarespace site is a great example of this “perfect rigidity”. In my mind, I had this “perfect vision” of what it would be, that being a digital magazine that I’d publishing “frequently”. The problem though is that producing a magazine is a hell of a lot of work because you need to create all of your content first before you can publish your “issue”.

When I looked at what I was doing I laughed at myself. What an idiot I was! In trying to create this “perfect” vision of what I wanted to achieve, instead of sharing this information with others, I instead ended up building a dam that not only blocked the flow of information to those who really wanted it but also built up my stress and frustrations as well, since I was trying to produce something “perfect”. When I saw what I was doing, I immediately said the following to myself.

Stop trying to be perfect.
Don’t let thing build.
Let things flow.

And as soon as I said that, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I needed to start unplugging the dam’s I’ve built and start letting things just flow which in turn would help release the pressure that had been building up. Things don’t need to be perfect. They just need to usable. Design isn’t about achieving perfection and holding it there up on a pedestal for all to see for all eternity. Design is about working at something daily to make it better than the day before.

Design your relationships.
Design your life.
Design you.

In closing, I just want to relay two more little things that I learnt from this experience.

Small changes daily
make a big difference over time.

Stories help us to
remind us of our culture,
of who we are
and of what we value.

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We Call It Death

That a company would actually put out promotional material like this and be dead serious about it just makes my skin crawl. Ya carbon dioxide is a natural element of life and so is water. But if the entire planet got submerged under water, would they still be singing the same tune? I mean give me a break. You’d almost expect this company to start marketing CO2 “enriched” water or something. It’s amazing how seriously screwed up people can get when it comes to money. At least some people are trying to show how absurd these ads really are (parody starts about 30 seconds in) but not sure if it is enough, as I could see some people actually believing that excessive amounts of carbon dioxide are a “good thing”.

“What’s that orange color over the city Mommy?”
“That’s called carbon dioxide honey. Don’t worry it’s a good thing and a natural part of life. Now hurry up and finish your McDonald’s cheeseburger and lets go. Mommy’s got to pick up her new SUV.”

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Open Social Networks

Jeff Jarvis talks about what companies can do to compete against Google in untapped areas. I couldn’t agree more on his comments on social networks.

* Social connections: I think there is a big opportunity to map social connections that already exist online. MySpace is really Rupert’s space. The internet is our space. It is, once again, already a social network. So look at it that way and make connections among the people here. Make it a way to find people. Make it a way to measure the quality of relationships: authority (as in Technorati), trust, leadership.

“It is, once again, already a social network.” Exactly! This is another reason why I left Flickr. Yes, it does a great job at creating social networks but those networks are confined to Flickr itself. MySpace does the same thing. We need to start creating social networks that are open and accessible, that can easily grab, share, and utilize the existing content on our sites already, no matter which software or service they are created with.

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Creating Relationships Instead of Markets

Doc Searls has an interesting article entitled Markets without Marketing.

My take on this is forget about “markets” altogether. Instead focus on creating relationships. And yes that means thinking about your “customers” as real people.

One thing that I’ve realize about relationships though is that creating the relationship is the easy part. The hard part is actually maintaining / sustaining that relationship.

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There Goes YouTube! Cya Laters!

I normally recommend YouTube to people (and was even going to have a bit on them in my first issue of Exploring Squarespace) because it’s really an easy way to add video to your site. After reading the following from a Boing Boing post regarding YouTube’s new terms and conditions though, I don’t think I’ll be recommending them further.

…you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business…

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Present Normality, Future Absurdity

Love this post on Boing Boing relating to a person selling an old Seven-Up print plate with the wording as follows on it (and showing a baby drinking from a Seven-Up bottle).

So pure…So good… So wholesome for everyone… including the tiniest tots!

Why I find this both hilarious and interesting is that I’ve been thinking about and seeing a lot of these kinds of things lately around me (especially in advertising).

In effect, how many things are we doing today that seem normal, yet in the future we’ll look back and say how stupid and absurd we we’re? Or put another way, the “right way” to do something today may be the “wrong way” to do something tomorrow.

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Creating Your Culture

When I was away on vacation this last week, I realized how much I enjoyed getting out of the city and away from the “rat race”. It’s almost as though you finally get a chance to “unplug” and therefore you’re much more easily able to find yourself again. With this in mind, I was reminded of what I said before about culture. That being that not only does our culture define us but we too define our culture.

Why this was important to me is that I realized that if we are going to live in these ever increasingly fast paced times, where changes occur at a dizzying rate, then we need something to ground or anchor us so that we don’t lose our way and more importantly don’t lose our self identity in the process. For me, cultural values are the perfect anchor because not only do they define how you want to live your life but they also emanate from you and can change the world around you. In other words, you define your culture and your culture influences those around you when you interact with them.

A great example of this was back when I used to play Counter-Strike. During that time, I was playing in a computer game in a totally fictitious make believe environment. Yet in interacting with others within that game, I still held true to the values that I strongly believed in as a person. On our Counter-Strike server where we let people play in our “world”, we were very adamant in defining the values and rules of our community’s culture and expected those within that environment to follow them otherwise they could go elsewhere. We promoted an open, caring, and sharing environment where “newbies” (those new to the game) could come and receive help without being harassed or ridiculed. As mentioned previously, this created a wonderfully enjoyable environment for everyone within our community (it almost reminded me of the TV series Cheers where you show up and everyone yells “Norm!”).

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The Known Discovering The Unknown

Dave Winer’s words couldn’t be more true.

They’re supposed to seek out people, to interrupt repeating and droning.

The people with the awareness and attention need to be the ones exploring and discovering those hidden on the edges instead of continually droning about themselves and their own ideas. This pushes the idea of sustainability for everyone, not just a select few. The idea is to share what you have gained with others around you, so that the entire “village” prospers and grows instead of just you.

This is why search engines are such popular and powerful points on the Web. They point away from themselves.

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Will Sell Soul For Product Placement

The PayPerPost concept just seems so absurd to me. I mean if you’re going to go that far as a business, why not just go all the way and damn well start rewarding the people out there who are already talking about your product or service. I mean if some person’s site / blog is already generating craploads of traffic to your product / company because they actually truly value your product, why not just send them a “Thank You” cheque in return for their generous selfless advertising of your product / site!

Oh sorry, how stupid of me! Why would a business pay someone for something that they are already doing for free! That would just be “bad business sense” now wouldn’t it!?

“Pardon me but did you just see which way the clue train went?”

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Step #1 – Delete Flickr Account

Completed.